Editorial

Introduction

On July 1st 1999, I published a book entitled “Capital Market Revolution!” which was a rather readable tome if I do say so myself. It outlined what practitioners found to be a rather scary outlook for the future of finance and especially financial markets.

While digital markets were making an incursion, the reactionary
forces of the status quo were fighting back and it was still not clear that even floors would be surpassed by electronic platforms.

The luddites prevailed in every avenue. At the same time, the exchange was still seen as a club and nobody was much minded to realise that just as privatization had revolutionised the provision of many services, so too exchanges were on the cusp of a radical change: going for profit.

Almost 15 years later a whole generation of analysts barely recall what the heyday of the old fashioned clubs with their floors actually felt like. Nowadays we take for granted shareholder owned profit exchanges and market infrastructure as being the mainstream.

At the same time, this niche in the financial industry has no clear voice. A modest coterie of experts deal with investors alongside analysts and many investment bankers although the latter are mostly generalist.

Having watched the evolution of exchanges for some 25 years and studied their history while enjoying the experience of advising a great many bourses and investors alike, I felt there was a need for a new platform where we could look at this investment niche. ExchangeInvest.com and the accompanying free daily email newsletter “Exchange Invest” is the first stage of the process.

If you want to know all about exchanges, then enjoy the splendid site at mondovisione.com where all the world’s practitioners read the industry news. What Exchange Invest does is distill the informational flow to look from the perspective of an investor. The aim is honed from my own experience with hundreds of consultations and interactions with investors in exchanges and more broadly my tenure as a director of a private equity fund etc.

Therefore Exchange Invest is a new site at the nexus of helping investors and exchanges better understand each other. I, along with my team look forward to honing this offering in the future to provide fascinating, timely insights and analysis into the exciting world of investing in exchanges and the infrastructure of markets throughout the world, across all asset classes.

All feedback will be welcome and I hope you will enjoy the journey alongside us.